Alcohol-impaired driving fatalities

Humanity has, over the past decade, launched an unprecedented quantity of material into low orbit while simultaneously proving less than entirely capable of navigating the surface on which it already stands. From 2015 to 2022 these two numbers rose in lockstep at r=0.961, a correlation tight enough to make you check whether the satellites are judging us. They probably are not. They are mostly Starlink.

Annual launches to orbit climbed from around 90 in 2015 to over 180 by 2022, driven almost entirely by the arrival of SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 and the subsequent constellation boom, with Starlink alone accounting for the bulk of those payloads. Alcohol-impaired driving deaths rose in the same stretch as vehicle miles recovered post-pandemic and the American fleet shifted toward heavier SUVs and trucks, which are more lethal in a given crash. Both trends reflect their own industries maturing: one in aerospace efficiency, one in the grim mathematics of kinetic energy. They happen to be climbing at the same time for entirely unrelated reasons.

Two lines rising together tells you nothing about whether they can see each other. One is measured in kilograms to orbit, the other in the quietest rooms in America. The universe keeps no ledger that combines them.